Third Party
by InkWorthy
Summary: Another FPP one-shot, this time focusing on the Lead Cenobite's thoughts regarding Kirsty Cotton's marriage.


_Warnings for mentioned emotional abuse._

* * *

_She looks so beautiful in white,_ I thought to myself, _it's a shame the veil blocks her face. _The fabric was so fragile that the slightest breeze caught it, but even the embroidered flowers could not contain her smile or the light in her brown eyes.

It was a small affair, and none of her family was even alive to attend, but all had stopped to admire the woman walking down the aisle. Even I, having seen her at her most fiery and vibrant, had to stop contemplating the occasion just to absorb the sight of her. There was no question - Kirsty Cotton was a stunning bride.

I watched her walk towards the aisle to where I stood, and I took a step back as she approached. I imagined, as she turned her head in my direction and smiled, that she was smiling at me and not Tiffany, her one faithful bridesmaid. Of course she could not see me at all - nor did I truly want to, truly. This was a day of celebration, and perhaps it was human of me, but I did not wish to ruin it.

Kirsty turned away from Tiffany and faced her groom. Trevor Gooden - hardly an interesting man as far as my curiosity was concerned. An office, a hobby, other banal, human things. But he made Kirsty smile even when he was not there, and she had said yes when he had asked, and that was all there was to be said in the matter.

_A wedding,_ some small human voice in me spoke, _is a new beginning. She deserves so many more._ And, though I would have liked to see her make a different choice, I agreed. She had wanted her future - let her have what she has won.

Kirsty Cotton - no longer of that name - pulled her veil over her eyes and it fell back on her dark curls. I stepped around the altar to face her, peering over the groom's shoulder, and savored the radiance of her joy. I had never seen her so truly, honestly happy.

"You marry a champion today," I whispered in Trevor's ear, and he would not hear it, but some stray thought in his own voice would echo it to him later on. "Treat her as such."

The preacher began to speak, and I allowed my grasp on the scene to fade, closing my eyes and knowing I would open them to my own rooms. I had promised I would only see her for a moment, her happiest in years.

"May she have many more," I spoke aloud, and stone echoed my voice back to me. I opened my eyes, and I stood alone.

* * *

In 1919, in a different life, I threw my gun down and swore I'd never lift it again. I had more refined means of piercing the flesh, more interesting ways of bringing the curious and craven to the precipice of death and divinity. He deserved none of them; as I stared at the sight before me my hands ached to lift that ancient machine and put a crude, aged bullet right between his beady eyes.

Kirsty wept before me. She was locked in her - their - _her _room, face in her hands, shoulders shaking. Another fight, another night of chipping away at her spirit. He had shamed her, slowly, methodically, chipping away at her spirit like any Cenobite worth his salt, but no worthy Cenobite would expend such talents on someone such as Kirsty.

She couldn't see me now, just as she couldn't see me then; I reached to run a hand through her hair, but it fell through long straightened strands - her curls shamed away with the rest - and she did not respond. Outside the room that wretch was brooding; no doubt he was seeking the attention of others, flesh to fill the hole he'd bore into their partnership.

"I love you," she whispered into her hands. I sighed, turning my attention back to her. "I love you, I don't want to fight..."

Five years before she'd had screamed him out of her home for such behavior as he'd shown tonight, lying to her face, denying reality before her eyes. Five years of slow chipping away, replacing anger with guilt, subduing the fire. In another life he'd have made a decent Cenobite, I thought to myself, but he'd proven far too blind for that. To not see the gifts given to him openly, gifts I had only imagined earning - too sightless, too foolish.

And he had brought Kirsty a deep pain, one which even I could not relish.

"I'm sorry," she whispered again, and I clenched my fists again.

"Do not be," I said, though i knew she would not hear me, 'It is not you who has wronged the other." She sobbed into her hands, and I pulled back, before the urge to fight the barrier between us overtook me.

I would see him suffer, I promised myself, and more than that I would see that her spirit was restored, her fire rekindled. I would see him burn in its grasp.

* * *

It was almost laughably easy.

Crossing the barrier was not difficult - a willing vessel to carry the box, to lend me the mastery of his hand and tongue was hardly a struggle to come by. What I had not expected was that he would come to me so quickly.

Trevor had stumbled on her history almost by accident; the box was all but a whisper in what news there was of Channard's paltry hospital, but he'd managed to connect what few dots there were. Kirsty had certainly told him a version, but she'd never spoken the box's name, nor any of mine. He'd have had to seek out the name of the box to find it, to find me.

And there he was, in business attire standing among the rubble of what had been a home once but was now consumed by decay, buying his wife's betrayal. I had no need for human currency, but the vessel did, and when the promised offerings traded hands I could not help but feel the satisfaction of a proper purchase.

I had sold her safety, that I knew. But I had sold something else. Her complacency was no doubt at the mercy of her fire, her anger, and seeing the box again...

It would hurt her. It would hurt more than anything he'd done before, any of the underhanded words or bouts of punishing silence or lies. But I knew Kirsty, and I knew that she was angry when she was afraid, and she deserved to be very, very angry at Trevor Gooden. She would have her fire back, and her justice, and the rest of her days.

"May she have many more," I said, watching Trevor disappear with the box. I faded away, leaving my vessel to his bills, and stood back to watch the fire catch.

* * *

_Just a little something to keep the muscle going. Hoping to get things updated soon!_


End file.
